This Week on GR
by C. L. Cook
 This week: Welcome to our annual Fundrive campaign to raise much needed cash for the little station that continues to do for you, our campus/community listeners.
Joining me in-studio is Victoria Street Newz publisher and fellow CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft. There are too friendly volunteers taking up posts at our phone bank, all eagerly awaiting your pledge calls.
Remember our world famous Small Room of Big Prizes, wherein you, for a much appreciated pledge of fiduciary support to your only local news and music alternative radio station, can too venture for pick of fabulous loot and booty both donated and accumulated at the station over the past year.
For you new to the show, today is a departure from what we usually do around here. Gorilla Radio took to the air, in more or less its present form, in April of 1999. A dozen years later, I'd like to say things are better in the world now than they were then, and in many ways they are, but they are mostly the same, only more so. Then, the world watched as a Hitlerian villain threatened "his own people" with policies so vile military intervention was deemed to be immediately necessary.
Then president of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, in concert with his willing coalition of NATO partners, including Canada, conducted the first aerial bombing of a civilian population in Europe since the second world war. It was a televised, shock and awe preview of the years to come, featuring the hi-tech wiz bang destruction of an entire nation's infrastructure committed by the recognized "forces for good and democracy in the world."
Over 78 days, Serbia, the heart of the Former Yugoslav republic was blown apart, its fields and cities contaminated with Depleted Uranium, and thousands of its citizens, guilty of no crime, rendered dead, or maimed, orphaned, homeless, and made helpless. All this was done with scant apology, being of course done with only the highest of intent, and for the noble cause of the betterment of all.
That the facts were largely cooked up to serve a secret policy devised and implemented by a nexus of transnational corporations and their allies in the NATO governments, and the means of this bloody invasion contravened the both the Geneva Conventions and international law were of small matter to the victors, who like victorious martial aggressors immemorial marched into the ashes of the lands they destroyed, standing immune to the penalties justice demands of the vanquished.
Today, the world watches Libya, as the case is made to remove the next Hitlerian villain threatening "his own people" with policies so vile military intervention is deemed to be immediately necessary. The difference now being, those "forces for good and democracy in the world" don't seem nearly as good as once they did. And maybe that's not such a bad thing.
5:09:42 3:37 Music #8 - Dusko Goykovich's Menina Moca
5:13:19 10:00 Pitching with Janine Bandcroft
Welcome back to GR's annual Fundrive show; joining me now as she oft-times has done over the past eight or so years is Victoria Street Newz publisher, and CFUV broadcaster Janine Bandcroft. Hey Janine...ad lib.
5:23:20 2:26 Music # 1 - Bia's Jardin
5:27:46 3:00 Essay 2 (music from The Fire This Time bg)
Welcome back to GR's annual Fundrive show, wherein in we appeal to you for replenishment of funds and goodwill. For the last month, we've witnessed uprisings across North Africa, and throughout the Arab world, where people tired of living under the yolk of oppressive dictators and potentates, who all enjoy their vaunted positions due to a willingness to serve first the interests of international capital, have braved the bullets and dungeons of the military and secret police to go into the streets and peaceably demand change.
What they found, though different in degree, was just what the peaceful demonstrators at the G20 in Toronto were confronted with last year: State violence, dressed up in the colours of safety and security.
Shortly before his assassination in 1963, U.S. president John F. Kennedy warned; " Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Today in North Africa, and in parts of North America too, those hoping to make a peaceful revolution are finding the State is attempting to make that effort impossible.
What happens next is anybody's guess, but as Mr. Gaddafi has discovered, the people of Tunis, and Egypt, and Bahrain, and Yemen, and Libya have remembered a courage too long forgotten, and they refuse now to relearn the fear despots so desperately require to rule. And, the example of their bravery, the profiles in courage they provide, are becoming a beacon across a world clamoring for an end to injustice.
5:30:46 3:04 Music # 6 - Amanda Martinez's Hasta Que Pueda
5:33:50 10:00 Pitching with Janine
5:44:00 2:55 Music # 11 - Monia's Railroad
5:47:00 5:00 Essay 3 (music from The Fire This Time bg)
Welcome back, etc. Well, we're approaching the end of our time here. I thank all of you who have participated, and taken an interest over years in the things that I've tried to accomplish with this humble show. Over the past dozen years and more, I've covered wars, famine, disease, environmental degradation, and featured the men and women in high places and low who have chosen to pursue justice and dignity for humanity and its wild cohabitants on this tiny island in space.
It seems they and we seldom win; shit hoarders and individualists, as a long dead America poet observed, still run the show.
This past week, we've seen in part the price of human folly and hubris. At time of writing, at least a half-dozen nuclear reactors are, or are in the process of, nuclear meltdown. Thousands of Japanese are dead, and many thousands more are missing, injured, and homeless.
We don't know how much more we have to face in the coming weeks and years, but what we can safely surmise is this: When it all hits the fan, what people universally value is not things, but people. The world order is broken, and the ecology of this planet is undergoing dramatic transformation. There is little to be gained by arguing why that is, but what we must do is determine how best we can carry on in the new world we and those who follow are fated to live upon, and how those generation to come, should they come, can build from our shaken foundations to perhaps finally fulfill the promise of that glorious animal, Homo Sapiens.
Concerning the survival of our species and the millions of our cohabitant Earthlings, I have my doubts, but I am sure of a couple of things: If we are to survive it will have to be without the presidents and prime ministers, potentates, and generals; the world of the future, if it is to contain human beings, will be devoid of arms races, and lesser races, and internal combustion automobile races.
And, I'm sure that it's an exciting time to be alive, and we'll all too soon be quit of that; so, what shall we leave as legacy to mark the brief time we've spent on this wonderful planet Earth?
5:52:00 3:57 Music # 7 - Tom & Joy's Meditation
5:56:00 3:00 Thanks, recap, upcoming
5:59:00 --:-- -0-
G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and
providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.
Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, Mark and Rhoda Berenson, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Mordecai Briemberg, James J. Brittain, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Juan Cole, David Cromwell, Ezili Danto, Murray Dobbin, Jon Elmer, Yves Engler, Reese Erlich, Anthony Fenton, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Connie Fogal, Glen Ford, Susan George, Stan Goff, Amy Goodman, Robert Greenwald, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Scott Horton, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Diana Johnstone, Malalai Joya, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Brewster Kneen, Betty Krawczyk, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Jason Leopold, Jeff Leys, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Stephen Marshall, Linda McQuaig, George Monbiot, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Kurt Nimmo, Ken O'Keefe, David Orchard, Riki Ott, Greg Palast, Mike Palecek, Michael Parenti, Robert Parry, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, William Rivers Pitt, Justin Podur, Lila Rajiva, Jack Random, Sheldon Rampton, Paul Craig Roberts, David Robb, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, David Rovics, Danny Schechter, David Schindler, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Jean Saint-Vil, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Harvey Wasserman, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Andy Worthington, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.
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